“So, what time did it first hit your computer?” Janice’s voice was clear even if her actions were slurring.
“A little before midnight. It was subtle at first, I didn’t call Eric until almost two by which time it was a total disaster.”
“Okay, that’s three days plus before midnight makes four.”
Michelle tried not to look ill as Janice added a green fluid that oozed out of a bottle with great reluctance and then tried to climb back out of the bowl several times. Janice prodded it back with her pencil each time.
“Are you sure about this formula, Janice?”
“It’s right here.” She aimed her pencil at the wine flask. “No, here.” She pointed at the tome this time and a small blob of green dripped off onto the page.
“I’m just doing what it says for me to do.” Then she turned and focused her attention on Michelle. At the force of the woman’s gaze, Michelle was glad she was not a lesser woman, because one such would be plowed back into their chair like Peter.
She squinted.
Michelle braced herself.
Hell’s Librarian squinted harder.
Michelle grabbed the chair arms just in case.
“What was I saying?”
“Something about the formula?” Valerie offered up.
“Something about four days having passed,” Eric said in a perfectly steady voice that impressed Michelle no end. “Though some of that was just a time zone change when we came to Hell.”
“That was it! Gold star for the mortal.” Janice smiled brightly and poured herself a shot of root beer, knocked that back then took a slug from the wine flask. That almost caused her to collapse on the spot.
“So, anyway,” she gripped the edges of the desk to remain upright. “Plato and I, we talked about it some. We think that the whole thing will collapse after seven days.”
“Which whole thing?” Michelle didn’t like the sound of this and sat up on the edge of her chair.
“This whole thing.” Janice whirled her pencil about in the air, almost stabbing herself in the process. “You know, like Heaven, Hell, the Universe, all that stuff. You know, the universal computer without the Universal Software is just a bunch of hardware stuff for the cosmic scrap heap.” She pulled a Tootsie Roll out of her sweater pocket, unwrapped it and tossed it into the mix. She pulled out another, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth. After that her words were both slurred and garbled.
Michelle glanced at the others. Worry was written deeply on all of their countenances.
“The universe has three more days to exist?”
Janice nodded happily as she stirred the glop in the bowl with the point of her pencil.
“What then?”
“Well, you’ve heard of the Big Bang.”
“Sure,” Michelle shrugged. “I was there for that.”
“Well, this is like the Big Crunch.” She slapped her hands together with a pop sending the pencil skittering off down the aisle. The chartreuse mist, that had apparently been lurking under the card catalog, reached out and pulled the pencil out of sight.
“There.” Janice weaved proudly back and forth under the force of her own private windstorm. “That’s ready.”
Michelle rose to her feet and looked down into the turgid mass in the bottom of the tureen. Bright purple, as lurid as the wine in Janice’s glass, which she’d filled and forgotten then started nursing directly from the flask. The goop in the bowl sloshed back and forth, on its own.
“Janice? We don’t have to drink that do we?”
“Ewww! No way.” She grabbed a big hank of hair that had flopped over her face and tossed it over her shoulder, or tried to. She missed and it slid right back in place along with a couple chunks more but she didn’t seem to notice. It was like they were suddenly talking to the blond version of Cousin It, all hair and no person.
“Go find a patch of grass you don’t care about. Spread this stuff in a spiral on the ground. Uh…” She managed to find the magnifying glass again and, while she held her hair clear of one eye, inspected the formula in the tome once again. “Counterclockwise. Start at the center, at least three complete circuits.”
Janice put down the magnifying glass, missing the desk by a good two feet. It hit the stone floor with a sharp, “Tink!” of broken glass. She let her hair fall back across her face and nodded emphatically to herself at a job well done before reaching for the wine flask which then disappeared beneath the blond shroud.
“Then what?”
The Librarian shook her head, revealing a nose and one eye.
“Then what?” Michelle repeated.
“Oh. You have thirty seconds. Step on the spiral, and Poof! Bodhgaya.”
“Thanks, Janice. You’ve been a great help as always.”
She waved a shooing hand toward the door.
Eric took the bowl and a funnel and soon had the concoction in a glass-stoppered flask.
Just as they reached the door, Janice called out. Her personal whirlwind had become a foundering ship at sea and she was staggering left and right against the tossing waves only she could feel.
“Remember to wear shoes.”
“Why?” Valerie stopped and asked, her voice tinged with fear. “Will our feet melt?”
“Nah, or not much. But they’d be stained that color purple for ages after.”
Then she toppled and sank slowly out of sight behind the desk.
They left quietly and shut the door behind them.
DAY FIVE
And God said,
Let the waters bring forth abundantly
the moving creature that hath life,
and fowl that may fly above the earth.
Chapter 29
“Welcome to Bodhgaya, Mr. Squared.”
Eric was first through and stumbled to a halt at the suddenness of the change.
“Uh, that’s Erikson.” He addressed the sing-song voice that belonged to someone he couldn’t see beyond a shadowy outline. He blinked to little avail. The transition from the dusky fields of Hell to the glaring sunshine of central India was just too much for his optic nerves.
“Really. How curious. But, if you will please be so kind as to allow me to observe, is it not Eric-Squared that everyone calls you?”
“Well, yes. But—”
Valerie stumbled into him from behind almost knocking him forward into the small, dark man slowly coming into focus.
The man was Valerie’s height, Indian-dark with a broad face and high cheekbones. He stood in simple attire of a white button-down shirt, black slacks, and bare feet. A horse looked at Eric from over the man’s shoulder.
The horse was strapped to a two-wheeled cart that looked like the sawn-off front end of a covered-wagon from the “Westward Ho!” days. And instead of the canvas canopy, it had two small sideways seats facing inward between the tall wooden wheels so that four passengers could squeeze aboard, if they were good friends.
Eric managed to pull Valerie to the side when Michelle and Peter jarred into India close behind them.
“Uh, how did you…” Eric’s brain trailed off as he spotted the statue. No, his brain simply shut down as he was overwhelmed by the statue. It towered a hundred feet above them, a massive concrete fabrication of the archetypical Buddha meditating in lotus position. But that wasn’t what made his mind go. It’s that the statue was a spitting image of the man standing in front of them.
“Gautama! Honey!” Michelle wrapped the small man in a big hug. “How’ve ya been, pardner?”
The Buddha laughed and returned the embrace. “And you are speaking such awful Old-American West to compensate for your friend Valerie who is less inclined to do so despite her attire.”
“It was all they had.” Valerie grinned and shimmied her shoulders making her shirt’s fringes dance and swing. “Don’t ever g
o clothes shopping in Hell.”
Definitely not The Mac. This was a hundred percent Valerie and it made him want to take her to a line-dancing bar of all silly things.
“I shall be certain to recall this advice when such is needed.” The Buddha smiled and pressed his hands together and bowed to St. Peter, “Namaste, old friend. Ananda shall be very sorry that he missed you.”
“And I him. Be sure to say hello.”
“Please, come. We must have some tea.” He shooed them toward the horse cart and Eric clambered up alongside Valerie, squeezed hard hip-to-hip beside her. His knees knocked against Peter’s. Michelle similarly squeezed across from Valerie.
The Buddha climbed up on the tongue of the wagon, but didn’t bother to take up the reins. In fact there weren’t any.
He simply said, “Tea, Tigger.”
“You have a horse named after a Winnie-the-Pooh character?” Valerie sat closest to the Buddha.
“No, I have a horse named after Annie Oakley’s horse. It seemed appropriate, considering your attire.”
“I’m not a sharpshooter.”
“If she’s Annie Oakley,” Michelle piped in. “What are you going to call me?”
Eric was thinking over a few possibilities when Valerie answered simply…
“Calamity Jane.”
# # #
Michelle burst out laughing.
She didn’t know the last time that laughter had simply burst out of her like this. She slapped a hand on Valerie’s thigh, which wasn’t far since their knees banged together with each pothole the cart rolled over.
Valerie smiled at her.
It was good. This was good. She wanted to remember this feeling. Had to recall it the next time she was feeling so sorry for herself, as she’d been feeling even just this morning.
Tigger clomped through the streets of Bodhgaya taking his time as they weaved through the crowds, gaudy tourists giving way to men dressed as simply as the Buddha and women in those gorgeous saris. The shop stalls, small enough to be mounted on a wheeled cart and for a man to push home at the end of the day, also changed. Closer to the statue and the temples, the carts were piled high with t-shirts, flip-flop sandals, and carvings of the man driving his own cart. As they got farther away the wares became more day-to-day such as a knife sharpener, a tailor, vegetables, and grains and spices.
“Does anyone ever recognize you?” She asked their driver if such could be said of one who had merely spoken to his horse. Tigger was doing all of the driving.
“Until they have reached some level of enlightenment, people only see what they expect to see. They most certainly do not expect to see the Buddha at one of his own temples. A bit gaudy for my taste, but the pilgrims enjoy it, so…” He shrugged with a smile as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
Michelle needed to learn how to emulate that casual attitude about reality. Casual or maybe just contentment? Or… The Buddha had always bothered her a little. Always in such harmony with the world around him that whenever she was around him, she felt like she was screwing up by being so worried about everything.
“Eric and Valerie were, in their minds, expecting me,” the Buddha continued as Tigger paused to let an elephant go by with a huge banner hanging from its side advertising the latest Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. “Which makes their shift in mental energies, in order to recognize me, significantly smaller.”
As with so many things in the Buddhist system, his statement made perfect sense when it was being said. Then Michelle would try to grasp the next layer of meaning and in the process lose her brief hold on the original concept.
Michelle offered an, “Oh,” and hoped that his grand connection to the nature of the universe didn’t reveal her limitations. She felt like a mere technician. She’d seen it in other professions, but it was still hard to accept. Some people achieved mastery through dint of hard work, as she had. But every now and then, there was a “natural,” as Janice and the Buddha were.
Tigger pulled up in front of a tea stall and drifted to a stop. The Buddha climbed down and hung a muzzle bag that smelled of oats and molasses over the horse’s nose.
The five of them had to wait only a few moments for the family presently in the tea stall to finish and depart. The stall was a sort of tent perhaps six feet square. Burlap walls kept the worst of the sun’s heat off, except for the “door,” which was really part of one wall that didn’t have any burlap. Wooden benches lined two walls, which the five of them settled on. The remaining corner was occupied by a bunsen burner hooked to a propane tank which heated a large kettle. A small counter had tea, milk, sugar, and a tall stack of small stainless steel cups.
No matter how many times Michelle had come to India, she still burned herself drinking tea here. Stainless steel cups with sharp edges and no handles, yet Indians always made it look so easy and practical.
The tea vendor’s son, who barely came up to his father’s waist, began pouring fresh water into the pot.
“So, you have a bit of a problem?” the Buddha asked once the various pleasantries were out of the way and the boy had been sent running across the street to fetch some of the painfully sweet Indian delicacies. Here dough was merely a basis for holding sugar together, which was then drowned in sticky sugar syrup, honey, or both.
Michelle glanced over at the tea vendor but the Buddha signaled he was safe to speak in front of.
The man blithely focused on dumping tea, milk, and an immense amount of sugar into a steel pitcher. Then he sprinkled in some spices, each tea vendor’s recipe was unique and carefully protected. The odor of cinnamon filled the air.
“Yes,” Michelle plunged in. “It seems that the Software that Runs the Universe was stolen by one of your Hungry Ghosts.”
“Really? That’s fascinating. I didn’t know such a thing was possible.”
“Neither did we, until the software left both Heaven and Hell, and ended up on this woman’s laptop computer in Seattle.”
“And why would it go there?”
“It said,” Valerie looked at him a bit helplessly. “That it was looking for God.”
“Ah. Well that does make sense.”
“It does?” The four of them chorused their responses.
The Buddha blushed slightly. “Difficult to explain. Some other time perhaps.”
Michelle checked his expression, twice, but it was clear that he had said all that his enigmatic Buddhist background was going to permit him to speak at this time. The fact that it did make sense in any fashion was encouraging. At least she hoped it was encouraging.
# # #
Valerie considered Gautama’s statement. Thinking of him that way was more comfortable than thinking she was actually sitting halfway around the world from her apartment in a small Indian tea stall with the Buddha, St. Peter, and the Devil.
How did it make sense that the software had homed in on her laptop while seeking God?
She took Eric’s left hand in her right. She squeezed it and looked up at him. Clearly he was pondering the same question. She liked that connection of their minds as well as their hands. It warmed places deep in her chest that she had feared Landau Fucking McKenzie had frozen forever. She leaned in until their shoulders rubbed.
The software had come to her seeking God.
The thought made her feel quite torn in two. One part of her wanted to escape from this tiny tea stall and all the intense foreign sights, sounds, and smells. Even sitting with her back to the door, she could feel the hordes going by speaking unfamiliar languages, thinking foreign thoughts, and wearing clothes even less familiar to her than her Old West garb.
She’d never been beyond Europe before, and the temptation was high to run screaming down the street, howling like a wild dog until someone had the decency to lock her away in a white room with serious sound insulation. But the other part of her, the one that remaine
d seated, wondered at the implications.
That she had been randomly chosen was easier to understand than her possessing some innate uniqueness, some reason the software thought she would know God. There was actually a tickling sensation up her spine at the thought. Not a chill, more of a sense that she’d better prepare herself to be far more freaked out than the last few days had already made her. Maybe she’d just keep her attention on her mismatched cowgirl boots. At least they were comfortable.
“The way you are counting days is a problem.” Gautama was addressing Peter. “From Hell to Bodhgaya you transitioned from afternoon to late morning of the next day. There is the international date line to be considered. I would suggest that you have only today and tomorrow to resolve the dissolution of the universe.”
“It would be your problem as well?” Eric had clearly been following all this more closely than she had. “I mean if the universe ended, you would be gone as well?”
“Yes. Yes, it would be. But problems are never quite as they seem.”
The tea merchant boy offered her a plate of sweets. Valerie picked up the least dangerous looking one, it looked like an oversized, fried donut hole. The sugar-syrup coating instantly glued her fingers together. She took a bite and while her brain was trying to comprehend how anything in the world could possibly be that sweet, her teeth were trying to figure out how not to become glued together.
The tea water came to a boil and the man made a show of pouring it from as high as he could reach down into the steel pitcher in a clean, steaming arc. When the pitcher was full, he set the kettle back on the flame, then began pouring the tea, milk, and sugar concoction back and forth between two pitchers, again as far apart as possible. Clearly a learned skill, he never spilled a drop, even when turning to talk with his son in mid-pour.
“So, how do we find the jerk who stole my software?” Valerie surprised herself at how she said it. When had she decided it was partly hers? When it stole her cookbook. “Can you trace the Hungry Ghost?”
Cookbook from Hell Reheated Page 17